


Dysphoria

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Oz - L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz & Related Fandoms
Genre: And a little bit of self-hatred, Angst, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, I'm really making this piece sound cheerful aren't I?, Warning: deadnaming (sort of), warning: misgendering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27714728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: "Tippetarius takes some of Mombi’s clothes hanging from the line one day and puts them on." A look at Ozma's childhood - and an exploration of my own dysphoria through the prism of Ozma.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	Dysphoria

Dawn and twilight are rich with purples.

In other lands, the purples of the sun melt away to oranges, to golds.

The child does not know. The child has not seen it.

The purples amid the clouds pale into lighter shades, but remain the purples that they were at dawn, that they will be at twilight.

Limbo.

Only it is not limbo – it is merely the way things are in Gillikin Country. The fault is not in the land. The land is as it is – cannot be other than it is – as the child –

( _Cannot be other than it is…_ )

The fault is not in the land. The fault is in –

In the mind, in the heart that perceives things that way, perceives the limbo, the mind and the heart of the child – the _boy_ –

The fault is not in the frame of the child (the b----o----y, each letter in the word hanging on the other as from muscle), not in the meat and bone, but in… him…

( _Him._ )

Meat and bone need not remain meat and bone in Oz. They can be turned in for tin. Meat and bone are not the soul. The soul can exist in straw, in spun glass, in a patchwork quilt, in the jointed wooden limbs of a son…

The child knows this as anyone in Oz knows this – knows of the straw and tin at least, for he ( _…he…_ ) has heard stories from magicians passing by to bandy wares with Mombi or from any neighbors who dare come in the night for a poultice or a potion and then scuttle away in darkness – stories of the ruler of the Emerald City… of the Emperor of the Winkies… The child knows this, but has not seen it.

His world ( _his_ ) is small. The child has only gone a short distance into the forest when sent to fetch wood, though the child imagines it an adventure. The child’s world is the walls of the house, the patch of the cornfield – which the child finds a reasonable patch to lounge within to stave off the work foisted on… him… by old Mombi – and the stool on which to sit when milking the four-horned cow…

But the child… knows…

But knows… what?

Words cling like flesh and sinew. They wan like vaporous sunlight in the fading dawn.

What the child has not seen and does not know and what the child has not seen but _does_ know are like the paling, draining light wax-bleeding down the clouds.

Feeble, ephemeral, dissolving, dim – caught in a limbo whether it be dawn or midday or twilight or dusk…

He ( _he_ ) does not know why the _he_ feels wrong – he would deny it, if you asked him – the words are as vapors, shivering as sunlight in the air, the light seen for an instant, then shifting, wanning, waning… the taste of the words almost on her tongue (that feels _right_ ), but melting as the taste of air…

Tippetarius takes some of Mombi’s clothes hanging from the line one day and puts them on. They hang about his ( _his_ ) frame in billows like vague clouds while the _his_ tightens like the flesh upon the knuckle-bones of a clenched fist. He shucks them away, hating himself, but does not return them to the line.

When Mombi returns in the evening, she demands to know what has become of them.

“Some wild beasts tore into them,” Tip sings out smoothly.

“A likely story,” responds the old woman with a scowl, but can prove nothing.

Tip tucks the clothes in a secret corner of the house and when old Mombi goes out “grocery-shopping,” as she calls it, he dons them – only for a moment, a breath of time, enough time to feel his own gasp and the racing of his heart – although he knows that Mombi will not be back for hours, if not days.

Tip does not dare more than a moment.

But after an accumulation of moments…

After an accumulation of moments, the guilt dies down, the guilt Ozma imposes upon herself. Her breath steadies, her racing heart eases. She slips into a sense of self.

The world is small and still, but the stillness is her own.

It is a fragile sense of self – one that could rust like tin amid the tears of guilt, could scatter like straw among the fear, crack like glass… spoil like a pumpkin head…

But it is her own.

Her world is small and quiet, but it is hers to cherish.

_Hers._

That feels _right_ , but she would deny it, if you asked her.

She does not know the name _Ozma_ , knows nothing of Pastoria, does not do this for Oz but for herself.

Alone – in the secret-time.

Until she is not alone. Until she hears Mombi’s voice screeching behind her one day, having come home early, “Wretched boy! What are you about?” and her heart is in her mouth again.

She has learned to think fast living with old Mombi.

“I am making up a pantomime to mock at you, old woman!” she declares – with a smoothness that makes it seem effortless. Swallowing her heart back down, she shakes the cowl about her like bat’s wings and leers up at Mombi as Mombi has so often leered at her.

“Ah! So that’s it then!” snarls the old woman. “I might have known! So that’s where my clothes got to!”

Mombi tears them off her with indifference, leaves her with the rags she wore before.

She does not weep. She has learned to laugh instead of weep with Mombi near. Hands in her pockets, she saunters out to the field, whistling to the sky.

It is midday. The heavens are hues of violet and tourmaline.

Tourmaline.

They say a queen lives in the sky, a poverty queen.

Her gown is as sackcloth.

Tip’s gown was the hand-me-down of old Mombi, not even handed down…

Poverty queen…

_Sounds about right._

She whistles idly, turning to the crops.

There is work to be done.

(She was never one for work.)

But… anything to distract her from the impoverishment – the pauper’s ruin – of even her castles in the sky…


End file.
